Library › St Ephrem the Syrian › Hymns and Homilies
Hymns and Homilies
St Ephrem the Syrian, tr. Burgess, 1853
8. Metrical Homily 8: On the Two Natures of Jesus Christ
God, in His loving-kindness,
Calls mortal men gods,
According to His good pleasure;
But they in their enquiry
Limit Him who is really God,
As though He were man.
Cherubim bear aloft
Him who put on your body;
Seraphim are abashed before Him,
Angels are silent in His presence;
But ye, oh impure men!
The generation of that Glorious One
Have vilely dishonoured!
To the feeble body,
With which descending He clothed Himself,
His names and actions are accommodated;
And as it was necessary
That He should suffer hunger,
So it was necessary that He should pray;
And as the affection of hunger
Appertains altogether to the body;
So his lacking anything
Belonged entirely to the flesh.
Perish not through the names
With which that Living One clothed Himself,
That He might give life to all men!
For that Mighty One put on names
Which fall short of Him through his bodily form,
Because of His mercy towards you.
Concerning which of them
Do ye decide that it is true,
And honourable, and glorious?
The name of the Father is true;
The name of the Son is faithful;
That of the Pardoner is worthy of love;
That of Judge is terrible.
As the Son of man He is circumscribed,
But being unbounded in His nature,
He is truly God!
A weak measuring plummet
Hath presumptuously descended,
That it may fathom the sea
To find how deep it is!
It would investigate the springs of water
That it may ascertain whence they flow,
And whither they are tending.
But to search for himself
Lo! the foolish one is not able,
As to the place from which
The hand which made him took him,
And imposed on him restrictions,
Which he despises!
Who hath seen the dust of the threshing-floor
Presume to examine
The force of the wind, by questioning it?
But daring mortals do so
In their investigation of Him,
Whose breath gives life to the dead.
The cedars are rooted up,
And forests are twisted together;
But the chaff comes to examine
The nature of the holy wind;
And by the blast which bloweth it
To the mouth of the furnace,
Behold it is driven away!
The Lord and Father, who to man,
Is not visible, although He is his Judge,
Reprehends these cavillers;
“Why do ye thus pry into
The generation of Him by whose hand
Ye exist and were fashioned?
The clay is not capable
Of investigating the potter;
Vessels which are inanimate,
The artificer makes for his use;
But your Maker, who hath formed you
Rational, and possessed of knowledge,
Ye have scornfully rejected!”